922 AH.—FEB. 5th 1516 to JAN. 24th 1517 AD.
This year may have been spent in and near Kābul in the quiet promoted by the dispersion of the Mughūls.
In this year was born Bābur’s son Muḥammad known as ‘Askarī from his being born in camp. He was the son of Gulrukh Begchīk and full-brother of Kāmrān.
923 AH.—JAN. 24th 1517 to JAN. 13th 1518 AD.
a. Bābur visits Balkh.
Khwānd-amīr is the authority for the little that is known of Bābur’s action in this year (Ḥ.S. iii, 367 et seq.). It is connected with the doings of Badī‘u’z-zamān Bāī-qarā’s son Muḥammad-i-zamān. This Mīrzā had had great wanderings, during a part of which Khwānd-amīr was with him. In 920 AH. he was in Shāh Ismā‘īl’s service and in Balkh, but was not able to keep it. Bābur invited him to Kābul,—the date of invitation will have been later therefore than Bābur’s return there at the end of 920 AH. The Mīrzā was on his way but was dissuaded from going into Kābul by Mahdī Khwāja and went instead into Ghurjistān. Bābur was angered by his non-arrival and pursued him in order to punish him but did not succeed in reaching Ghurjistān and went back to Kābul by way of Fīrūz-koh and Ghūr. The Mīrzā was captured eventually and sent to Kābul. Bābur treated him with kindness, after a few months gave him his daughter Ma‘ṣūma in marriage, and sent him to Balkh. He appears to have been still in Balkh when Khwānd-amīr was writing of the above occurrences in 929 AH. The marriage took place either at the end of 923 or beginning of 924 AH. The Mīrzā was then 21, Ma‘ṣūma 9; she almost certainly did not then go to Balkh. At some time in 923 AH. Bābur is said by Khwānd-amīr to have visited that town.[1348]
b. Attempt on Qandahār.
In this year Bābur marched for Qandahār but the move ended peacefully, because a way was opened for gifts and terms by an illness which befell him when he was near the town.
The Tārīkh-i-sind gives what purports to be Shāh Beg’s explanation of Bābur’s repeated attempts on Qandahār. He said these had been made and would be made because Bābur had not forgiven Muqīm for taking Kābul 14 years earlier from the Tīmūrid ‘Abdu’r-razzāq; that this had brought him to Qandahār in 913 AH., this had made him then take away Māhchuchak, Muqīm’s daughter; that there were now (923 AH.) many unemployed Mīrzās in Kābul for whom posts could not be found in regions where the Persians and Aūzbegs were dominant; that an outlet for their ambitions and for Bābur’s own would be sought against the weaker opponent he himself was.
Bābur’s decision to attack in this year is said to have been taken while Shāh Beg was still a prisoner of Shāh Ismā‘īl in the Harāt country; he must have been released meantime by the admirable patience of his slave Saṃbhal.